Angelica

by Sharon Shinn

  Miriam stood up, too. “No—it’s been rather a long day. I think I’ll just go to my room and lie down.”

  “Good idea,” Frida said somewhat dryly. “We rise well before the sun does to start the first round of baking.”

  “Oh, surely she doesn’t have to—not on her very first day,” the younger girl protested. “Let her sleep in just once.”

  Frida shrugged. “Very well. Tomorrow morning you can sleep in, but I’ll expect you down in the bakery before the sun’s been up very long.”

  Miriam smiled at her champion. “Thank you, I’ll do both of those things,” she said. “And thank you for the meal. It was most delicious.”

  She detoured to the very cramped water room so she could clean off the dust of travel and the invisible stain of abandonment. There was a small mirror hanging above the tiny sink, and she peered into it to see if she could read anything on her face. No; her brown eyes looked perfectly calm, her fair face serene and unpinched. No one who did not know her well would be able to read anything amiss in her cheeks and eyelids. Even Susannah had not been able to tell how furious she was.

  But, of course, Susannah did not care.

  Back in her room, she settled herself onto the hard, narrow mattress, so different from her luxurious bed at the Eyrie, and willed herself to sleep. She was indeed tired, exhausted from three days’ worth of holding in her extreme sense of rage and injustice. She had not known exactly what she would to do punish Gaaron and Susannah, but she had been sure something would occur to her—and yesterday it had. It was perfect. She just wanted to make sure Susannah was safely out of the city before she put her plan into practice.

  She slept the untroubled sleep of the righteous, and woke briefly when she heard the three women gather for breakfast. She allowed herself another hour of sleep, then rolled out of bed, rested and purposeful. A quick cleaning in the water room, an even quicker repacking of all her things, and she headed downstairs with her duffel bags over her shoulders.

  Frida was in the kitchen when she emerged from the stairwell; the girls were no doubt at the front counter. The Edori woman looked her up and down, taking in the luggage, the travel clothes, the mulish expression.

  “I’m going out to the Lohora camp before they move on,” Miriam said coolly. “I’m going to travel with them for a few months.”

  Frida nodded. “Is that what it is?” she said. “I knew you had something planned.”

  Miriam put her chin up. “I don’t have to stay here.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “Although it was very kind of you to say you’d take me in.”

  “Do the Lohoras know you’re joining them?”

  “No, but they’ll be happy to have me. Susannah says the Edori will take in any stray traveler and make him welcome.”

  “That’s true. Well, let me give you some breakfast, and a few loaves of bread to take with you. Tirza appreciates my bread, I know.”

  Braced for a fight, Miriam felt a little deflated by Frida’s cheerful acceptance of her announcement. “And if anyone comes looking for me, you can tell them exactly where I’ve gone,” she said somewhat belligerently.

  “I will, if they ask,” Frida said. “Do you have a canteen with you? Plenty of water? That’s the worst part of travel, you know, the thirst. Here, I’ve made you a little plate with some cheese and fruit. You better eat now, build up your strength.”

  Since it seemed stupid to refuse the food, Miriam accepted it with rather bad grace, and ate while Frida wrapped a few loaves of bread. “There. That’ll go nicely with a little rabbit stew tonight,” she said with satisfaction. “Be sure and give Tirza my love. And Claudia and Anna and all the rest, too, of course.”

  Miriam took the package and tucked it into a pocket of one of her duffel bags. “Should I say good-bye to the girls?”

  “If you want. I’ll tell them if you’d rather.”

  “All right then. I’ll just go. And—well—thank you.”

  Frida nodded and rinsed her hands off in the sink. “I enjoyed having you under my roof the one night. Safe traveling.” And she turned back to a huge roll of dough she was kneading on the counter.

  Miriam picked up her suitcases and went out the back door.

  The morning was cooler than she’d expected, after the heat of the bakery, so she stopped almost immediately to pull on a jacket. The suitcases were heavier than she remembered, even when she’d slung them over her back by their long leather straps. And the walk to the city limits was longer and more wearisome than it had been the other day, in the company of chattering women and free of any burdens. A few people jostled carelessly against her, apologized, and hurried on.

  She was thirsty before she’d even left the city, but she couldn’t remember how far the camp was and she didn’t want to drink all her water before she’d made it a mile from the bakery. So she paused to buy an orange from a street vendor, flashing her wrist bracelet at him.

  He laughed and shook his head. “No, lady, not for me. I don’t keep no tally with the angel holds. It’s coins and coppers I’ll take, things I can count up at the end of the day.”

  Her bracelets had never been rejected before; she’d never carried cash. Embarrassed, she backed away a pace. “Oh—I’m sorry—next time, then, I guess,” she said hastily.

  He laughed again and tossed her one of the big bright spheres. “That’s against next time,” he said. “Travel safely.”

  She peeled and ate the orange as she walked, considerably heartened both by the friendly exchange and the taste of the sweet fruit. Still, she was frowning again soon enough. Her feet hurt, her shoulders ached, she was thirsty again, and the Edori camp was nowhere in sight. Could she have gone in the wrong direction? She thought not; she had paid close attention to small landmarks when she had followed Susannah and her friends here the other day. She remembered that misshapen tree and that spiky blue rock, perhaps a long-ago site of early mining efforts. She remembered that broken-down wagon, discarded years ago by its appearance, and the staved-in barrel on its side nearby. She remembered this stretch of half-dead wildflowers, giving up so early in the season before true cold had really come. She was going the right way.

  But perhaps she was too late.

  She was sure Tirza had said they would camp another day or two; she was sure they had wanted to give that man, that Bartholomew, a couple more days to recover. But perhaps he had grown cool and healthy in the night. Perhaps he had leapt from his pallet this morning and declared, “I’m a well man, let’s move on.” Perhaps they had pulled up stakes and headed off to—Breven—or northern Gaza—or western Bethel—or anywhere. Who knew where an Edori would go?

  How would she find them? And if she did not find them, would she be able to find her way back to Luminaux before nightfall? Anxiously, she looked over her shoulder, but the Blue City was still visible, exuding a rich, satisfied azure glow just at the horizon line. Surely she would not walk so far that she would not be able to find her way back.

  Surely the Edori were just another mile or two away.

  She stopped, set down her bags, and was frozen by indecision. That way Luminaux, safe and easily reachable. The other way, the Lohora camp, or so she thought. She could return to Frida’s, feeling foolish but fairly certain of a welcome; or she could keep walking until the sunlight ran out and it was clear that she had, through bad timing or bad geography, missed the Lohoras entirely. No doubt, if that occurred, she could nurse her food and her water to last her another day. She could find her way back to the Blue City before nightfall the following day.

  She picked up her suitcases and moved forward.

  She traveled perhaps another two miles before she saw the first silhouettes of tents against the hazy sky. She was so relieved that all her muscles loosened and she had to sit down a moment, shucking off the bags as she sank to the rocky ground. Yes, there was the meandering little streambed she remembered seeing the last time she had walked this way; this was all looking familiar.
She could afford to take another swallow from her canteen. She was near water. She was near friends.

  It was past noon by the time she struggled into the Edori camp, hot, thirsty, dirty, and suddenly questioning what in the god’s name she had done. Would these people even remember her? Would they truly welcome her? What would she say to them? What would they hear no matter what she said?

  “Miriam!” a voice called, and she dropped her bags and whirled around to face the speaker. It was Anna, she thought, Keren’s older sister, the spare unsmiling one. “It is you. I thought I recognized your bright hair. Have you walked all this way from Luminaux?”

  Her voice called Tirza from her tent and turned a few others from their cookfires. “Miriam,” Tirza said in a voice of surprise. “Don’t you look thirsty. Come sit down and have a drink of juice.”

  Miriam felt absurdly grateful, and exhausted and silly enough to want to cry. “It was farther than I thought,” she said, sinking down to a mat in front of the welcome fire. “And I just finished up the last of my water.”

  “You can have water, too, if you like, but I think the juice will be better,” said Tirza, pouring a red liquid into a chipped mug. “Did you walk all the way from Luminaux with your bundles in your hand?”

  “They didn’t seem so heavy before,” Miriam said, gulping down the juice.

  “All your belongings weigh twice as much at the end of the trip as they do at the beginning,” Anna said with a severe smile. “Though there’s only half of what you remember bringing inside each of your bags.”

  Tirza’s gaze went to the duffel bags dropped unceremoniously at the edge of the fire. “All your belongings?” she repeated in a soft voice.

  Miriam nodded, and her eyes went from one woman to the other. “I thought—Susannah wanted me to live with Frida in the city but I thought—I don’t want to do that. I want to live with the Edori. Travel with you. I don’t ever want to live in a city or a hold or—or anywhere ever again.”

  Tirza looked over at Anna, no expression to be read on either dark face. “Does Susannah know what you’ve decided?” Anna asked.

  Miriam shook her head. “No. But I told Frida, who will tell her if she asks.”

  “There is so much empty space in the tent now that Keren has gone to visit the angels,” Tirza said.

  “Then I can stay?” Miriam asked eagerly.

  Tirza looked surprised. “Of course you can. We’ll be happy to have you. No Lohora ever turned away a guest or a traveler in need.”

  “I’ll go tell Eleazar,” Anna said, and moved off to thread a path through the clustered tents.

  “I really can stay?” Miriam asked again.

  Tirza smiled. “The Lohoras are happy to have you.”

  That night, eating dinner with the Edori around the campfire, warm, well-fed, and drowsy, Miriam was as happy as she remembered being at any point in her life. Neither Anna nor Tirza was much of one for fussing, but they had made her feel welcome and special, giving her extra helpings of food and water, introducing her to all the Lohoras she had not met the other day. Dathan had settled beside her and told her funny stories, flirting with her a little but in the way that Miriam understood. This was how she herself flirted with all attractive men, just because it felt good to smile and tilt her head and say things that could be interpreted two different ways. She was not surprised Susannah had been in love with him. She was surprised Susannah had been willing to leave him for Gaaron.

  Of course, she would never forgive Susannah if she left Gaaron to return to this Dathan.

  She might never forgive Susannah anyway.

  She found it strange to sleep in the crowded tent, wedged between Anna and Amram and acutely conscious of the sounds of breathing all around her. There was a rock under her hip, but she was afraid to move and dislodge it, sure she’d wake up someone else. But she couldn’t fall asleep. She wriggled to one side, hoping to edge away from its sharpest point. It remained firmly pressed against her flesh. Well, what did she care? She’d wake up in the morning with a little rock-sized bruise on her skin, but that was a small price to pay for having found sanctuary. She closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep.

  She had to use the water tent.

  She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. No, no, no, she would not get up in the middle of the night, pick her way through the coiled tangle of sleeping bodies, creep through the quiet camp, and try to locate the water tent (which, she had to say, she did not like even half so well as Frida’s tiny water room)—all without waking up the whole camp. She would concentrate on falling asleep. She would forget about physical discomforts. She would let her mind dissolve and her thoughts turn to smoke and dreaming.

  She really, really, had to find that water tent.

  Pushing herself to a sitting position, she drew back her covers and came to a crouching stand. A slow process to cross the tent, putting her feet down by blankets and bodies, trying not to step on the spread masses of black hair that were hard to see in the darkness. She made it to the tent flap without mishap and stepped out into the chilly dark. It was getting cold down in the southern provinces; what would winter be like?

  What would winter be like traveling in the open air and sleeping inside the rather thin walls of a tent? That had not previously occurred to her.

  Shivering, she hurried through the shadowed camp to the tent set farthest from the central fires. Some small shape started and hopped away as Miriam drew closer and she had to strangle a scream. She had not thought about any dangers that might be lurking. Could there be wolves or other predators prowling just outside the camp, waiting for strays to step beyond the border of safety? She had to hope she would be quick enough to elude them.

  She stepped inside the water tent, which was little more than a few shallow holes dug in the ground and a collection of jugs and bottles. Her business concluded, she hurried back to her own tent and glided inside. No one stirred, although, to her own ears, her breathing was loud and labored. She found her own pallet, remembered to move the rock, and lay down again at last.

  And she smiled up at the small hole in the top of the tent, affording a tantalizing glimpse of the starry panorama overhead. It was true. She’d never been happier in her life.

  In the morning, she found reason to reassess that.

  She was wakened far earlier than she would have chosen by the noises of camp life going on around her—voices calling, wood being snapped in two for the fire, spoons clanking against cook pots. There were other sounds, too, that she could not identify, but somehow bigger sounds, as if important enterprises were under way. She turned her head fretfully on her flat pallet, feeling her bones ache from the unaccustomed rest on hard ground. Feeling dust in her hair and the grime of yesterday’s long walk gritty against her skin.

  How exactly was she going to bathe?

  She stood up slowly and stepped out into the gray day, noting that the sun was losing its struggle against a low cloud cover. Tirza and Anna were arguing over the cook pot in a good-natured way, and whatever they were cooking smelled wonderful.

  “Look, it’s the sleepy one,” Tirza greeted her with a smile. “How are you feeling this morning? You looked so tired last night.”

  “I feel a little stiff,” Miriam admitted.

  “That’ll wear off after you’ve been walking a while,” Anna said.

  Miriam glanced at first one woman, then the other. “Am I to be walking somewhere?”

  Tirza nodded over at the main body of the camp, where even now men and boys were circling the tents, unstringing wires and catching the big canvas coverings as they crumbled to the ground. “Bartholomew’s so much better, and we’ve been here so long, that we just all decided today was the day to move on. Strike camp before noon, see how far we get before nightfall.”

  “Oh! Well—what can I do to help?”

  “Anything you like. No shortage of tasks,” Anna said.

  “Very well. But first—I should like to get clean. But I don’t know—I’m not
sure—”

  Tirza pointed at the little streambed that wound so close to their camp that it must have been the reason they chose to settle here. “About a quarter mile down, the creek deepens enough for you to go in to your waist, and it’s far enough away, and late enough, that you ought to have a little privacy. I understand you allali girls are touchy about that,” she added with a grin.

  Miriam wasn’t sure how to define “allali,” but if it meant someone who didn’t bathe out in the open in Bethel rivers, that was certainly her. “Won’t the water be cold?” she said in a small voice.

  “Not as cold as it’ll be in a few weeks,” Anna said unsympathetically. “There are some who don’t bathe all winter long, but I can’t abide that. Once a week or I can’t live with myself.”

  “Aren’t there—can’t you—I mean, you could bring water back to the camp and heat it up, maybe—”

  The Edori women looked at her as if she was an apparition from a dream. “It just takes a few minutes to bathe in the river,” Tirza said. “Why, to haul water and heat it would take hours. It’s trouble enough just to fetch the water for cooking.”

  “Well—I suppose—” Miriam said, thinking she wouldn’t mind if it took her all day, if it meant she could be clean and comfortable. “Anyway, I guess today I’ll just go clean up as best I can—”

  “You might wash out the clothes you’ve got on now, if you plan to put on fresh ones,” Anna suggested. “Hang them up to dry when we make camp tonight, though it still might take a day or two before they’re not damp anymore.”

  Miriam stared at her, confronted with a new thought. Back at the Eyrie, she just dropped her clothes off at the laundry room, and they were returned to her, cleaned and pressed. She knew how to rinse out a blouse or an undergarment, of course, but she’d never actually washed her own clothes. Or thought to do it every day.

  Or maybe not every day, if they didn’t camp by water every night.

  But if they didn’t camp by water every night. . . how would she get clean every morning?